The Film: "Dante's Peak" was one of the two volcano movies that came out during 1997, starting off the "Everything In Twos" syndrome of last year(asteroids, bugs, etc). Compared to it's "cousin", "Volcano", "Dante's Peak" feels far more realistic, and yet it manages to be less entertaining. Although it does fall back into comfortable action/disaster film formula, at least it's well done technically.

Pierce Brosnan stars as Harry Dalton, a volcanologist who's getting over the loss of his wife in a tragic volcano-related accident a few years before. He's called back to action to investigate "Dante's Peak", the volcano that lies above the town of the title. He's joined by a rag-tag team that, honestly, feels like a real volcanology team. Brosnan, although he doesn't seem realistic, has the role down pat. He walks the walk, he talks the talk in a good performance.

As I said, the film is technically well done. Roger Donaldson is a director that can work with somewhat subpar material and at least make it entertaining("Species"). Here, he has the added feature of formerly being an aspiring volcanologist himself. Although everything tries to be accurate, nevertheless there are quite a few scenes(one involving a dog jumping into a car) that are pure Hollywood and actually take the audience out of the movie.

The film also takes quite a long time to get going, going through seemingly every little character in the town, trying to give the audience some characters to sympathize with or care about. That's really the problem with the film - it tries to focus on thinly written characters rather than action. It's similar to the "Deep Impact" vs. "Armageddon" match - "Dante's Peak" is the "Deep Impact", a character drama where the action is handed out thinly.

Overall, "Dante's Peak", like the rest of the disaster films that have been coming out lately, satisfies as basic entertainment. As it falls, "Dante's" is a little bit better than average, although I doubt that I'll be watching this film repeatedly.